I’m off to hear Leo Laporte at the morning keynote (easst coast jet lag allows me to rise at an earlier hour than normal. Did you know the sun is up at 6:30? Who knew?). Looking forward to some good information at the sessions as well. I had a lot to digest last night… I suspect I’ll be spending a fair amount of time putting together some new suggestions for clients in the podcasting and social media spheres after this show. You might even see some new additions to Nineball Media’s offerings…
At Blog World
One semi-conscious early AM flight and I have arrived in Vegas for Blog World… I’m sure there will be plenty to blog about. First up is a session on video techniques. More later, including some assuredly poor quality pictures…
UPDATE…
Ok, so this pic’s not so bad… but the guy ahead of me was caught in an awkward looking position. Video session was very good…. up next is a session on ways to monetize your podcast. One panel member suggested forming a podcast consulting company. Hmmmm… not a bad idea. Not bad at all…
UPDATE again…
I just sat in on another great marketing session full of amazing tips on leveraging new media for a variety of revenue generating ideas. So far I’ve been quite impressed with the quality of the presentations. Now I’m off to either (a) enjoy Vegas, or (b) implement some of these ideas for some of my clients. My workoholic ways and commitment to clients seems to be leaning (b). Celine Dione… Penn & Teller… Carrot Top… Danny Gans… the shows must go on without me!
AOL shrinking at a rapid pace
Once mighty AOL has lost 1/3 of its paying clientèle… in a year. Ouch. In some ways I’m not surprised… how many people do you know who still use AOL? When it first came out, AOL dominated the online access market with its ubiquitous free floppy disks and later CDs coming at you from every angle.
But then, people grew seemingly more interested in the broader array of content offered through the Internet, and AOL seemed like a sad middleman for the last 7 years or so. It will be interesting to see if its advertising model works…
Montreal in November
Greetings from Montreal. Memo to those traveling to this beautiful city on business or pleasure… it’s friggin cold. Much colder than Portland or DC. I suspect Vegas next week will be warmer for us at Nineball Media.
Back to Montreal… it’s very wired. Lots of wifi access points, and perhaps more than one would expect. Coming from DC which feels less wired than it should be, it’s a nice change.
Lots of new news on Leopard (Mac OS 10.5), but I promised a little less Apple on the blog, so I’ll let you Mac types find the info from the other usual suspects out there. Have a great weekend!
gPhone?
Google may be coming out with a big announcement in the next couple of weeks according to a Wall Street Journal report… will Goggle slap Apple silly in the mobile phone market?
Portland a blog mecca
Oregon Public Radio reports that Portlanders love blogs, second only to Austin, TX. Here at Nineball Media’s west coast office (based in… Portland), we’re committed to making Portland eke out the last percentage point or two to topple the mighty Austinites (Austiners?). Read more blogs in PDX!
Hat tip to Mike for pointing this out… hat tip to my under-caffeinated brain for ironically posting a story about Oregon blog readership for the Nineball Oregon office… on a blog. Hat tip to the man or woman who came up with the concept of hat tipping.
Customer service
I’m realizing how much this blog leans towards Apple products… a true tech blog should spend a little time away from the fruited tech giant. Maybe tomorrow…
Nineball Media’s latest acquisition, a pimped out new iMac has been feeling a little sad lately. It doesn’t like speaking with the great tubes known as the Internets. After running every diagnostic and even reinstalling OS X (yes, one day before the new one comes out, I have to install the old one again), I came to the conclusion that I had to call tech support.
Now, tech support gets hammered all across the computer industry, and for good reason. It’s hard enough to figure out computer issues over the phone, but it’s even worse when there’s very little talent and it’s spread very thin (and often, across time zones and oceans). The experience with Apple was, all things considered, pretty good. Thankfully, I had pretty much exhuasted their checklist, so my supposition of a fried Airport card was confirmed by Andrew (from now on referred to as “my boy Andrew”). We got a doctor’s appointment set with the not-overstated at all genius tomorrow at 1. Nineball shall not have to rely on its older equipment for more than a day. My boy Andrew made it so.
One note… I’m not sure how long the process would have taken if I hadn’t taken an hour before the call to my boy Andrew to do a fresh reinstall of OS X… I think even he would have made me do it and then call back if it hadn’t worked. Word to the wise… before calling tech support, exhaust all options you can think of, even the ones that border on really annoying (like, say… reinstalling an operating system one day before the new one comes out).
One other bit of Nineball news… I just signed up for the Blogworld and New Media Expo in Vegas in a couple of weeks. Since I missed out on the Portable and New Media Expo in California last month, I thought it would be good to check this one out. If you’re heading to Vegas and want to meet up to chat about podcasting or whatever, feel free to drop me a line…
iPod turns 6
Hard to believe how much has changed in 6 years… just check out the quaint notions of price, size and how big someone’s “entire music collection” was back then…
Apple surpasses IBM
Based on earnings reports released yesterday, Apple’s officially a bigger company than IBM. Really, we already knew that… what we get from these reports is confirmation that Big Blue is slowly slipping behind the pack. It’s amazing that 25 years ago, the personal computing marketing wars pitted the Apple II versus the IBM PC… how things have changed. What never changed was how IBM always used old imagery for new technology… I mean, Charlie Chaplin hawking a computer? That would get some ad exec fired these days…
Apple taketh away and then giveth
Apple has announced it’s releasing a toolkit for developers to create 3rd party applications for the iPhone. The kit should be out in February… not sure if the folks who hacked their phones with AppTap will be happy with waiting that long. Apple took a bit of a hit over it’s 1.1.1 firmware release, since it bricked a bunch of phones and also rendered the AppTap apps useless. I suspect the February release will probably include a lot of changes (like a frieking to-do list… helloo!?). I’m quite sure there will be a slew of apps created by Apple that Jobs will unveil at the MacWorld keynote in January. Also, there’s rumors that the iPhone will be enhanced when Leopard (OS 10.5) hits store shelves on October 26th… we shall see…